Speak No Feeling
by Lady Rori
Summary: House dies two days after the shooting. Some things you can't forget...


I actually don't believe in angst BUT. Yeah. Listening to Imogen Heap's **Hide and Seek** five times in a row can do this to you. This is unusual for me. And impulsive. Which is also unusual.

**Speak No Feeling**

**>**

Foreman pays his regards with a sharp nod and reverent eyes. He wasn't there when it happened, but he imagines it was a simple thing. A typical tragedy like the ones he sees every day, no more important, no less. He sees the situation like a _doctor_ because that's what he _is_ - maybe, that's all he is.

No, he insists, I'm not just a doctor. I'm human, too. I'm more human than _he_ was. Stop fucking talking to yourself, he was just your boss. He didn't even say hello to you in the morning.

Well. Neither did you.

His reluctant tears don't come until the next day. They burst like a damn over his dashboard, and he wipes them fiercely away in shame.

>

Chase is a man who's not afraid to cry. Sweeping, bulbous tears, pink eyes, a pathetic wibble of the lip. His hair is uncombed and there's something pure, enticing about his misery, leaking over his cheeks. He's a child. He's a fool. He wasn't there when it happened and he doesn't want to think about it, but the sound of flesh being holed through echoes in the back of his head like a river that never rests. He goes through all the questions that make him five years old - _Why?_ and _It's not fair_ and _how could you_ are the most popular ones. No one cares that his sobs are loud and irritating.

He sits by himself and prays.

>

Cameron doesn't know what to do. She tried to be there when it happened and she would have if she could have. He would have hated it but she would have been there, holding his hand or something dumb like that. She feels lost and lightheaded and like she's met him for the first time all over again. One of her first impulses is to find a shoulder to weep into, like a hysterical little girl; then she realizes the only shoulder she would ever have gone to was _his_.

Would he have been too tall for her to lean on his shoulder?

>

Cuddy talks to the body and tells it everything. She was there when it happened and he gave her his last words, those pointless, sentimental things everyone _gives_ meaning to, and now she owes him; she's not sure if it's too late or not, but that doesn't stop her -- nothing ever does. Even if she's talking to a fucking closed box because that's what he asked for. What a moron. Didn't he know she wanted to talk to a face? Once again he makes her feel like an ass.

"I was going to ask you," she says. The box says nothing. "Going to ask you to... But then you looked at me and I wasn't sure. I don't know why. I was never _sure_ about you." She shrugs.

After she's done, she feels more or less completely incompetent. Her eyebrows distort and she puts a hand to her forehead, massages her face and closes her big protruding eyes. Her heeled footsteps are as sharp as ever on the concrete as she walks away, despite her silent tears.

>

Wilson is the last one to walk by the casket. He wasn't there when it happened, didn't get there until it was over and he was too late. He will never forgive himself for that. Now, this morning, he was late to the wake.

He puts his hands in his pockets and stares moodily at the wood, stays like that for a while. Behind him people leave and leave and leave. He waits for the last person to go, and hesitates for a minute.

He undoes the hinges. He opens the coffin.

He has nothing to say. There is no cane by the figure's right hand, it's not wearing the casual attire he always used to wear. The truth of the matter is, it provides no comfort. It is haunting and unnatural and stiff and Wilson does not dare stroke it. Even the bullet wounds are sterile and polished, iced over and frozen in the withered image of death. Wilson has nothing to say to it.

He will never forgive himself for letting House's murderer walk by him. He will always remember the day he was too late. With one last blank stare, James Wilson turns and walks straight into the wind, letting the ruthless blast sting his eyes as he goes.


End file.
